Monday, May 09, 2016

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1452-1454

Everybody knows Americans are overworked. A 2014 Gallup poll found that salaried Americans now report working an average of 47 hours a week — not the supposedly standard 40 — while 18 percent report working more than 60 hours. And yet overtime pay has become such a rarity that many Americans don’t even realize that a majority of salaried workers were once eligible.

In a cruel twist, the longer and harder we work for the same wage, the fewer jobs there are for others, the higher unemployment goes and the more we weaken our own bargaining power. That helps explain why over the last 30 years, corporate profits have doubled from about 6 percent of gross domestic product to about 12 percent, while wages have fallen by almost exactly the same amount.
Overtime Pay: A Lifeline for the Overworked American
By NICK HANAUER and ROBERT B. REICH APRIL 21, 2016
New York Times

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I know about the debate over banning tips and raising the minimum wage. I am not sure how I feel about it, and from what I can tell, my co-workers don’t either. People can be awful and not all bars are like this one. I am aware that many servers have shitty jobs for shitty pay. And let’s be real, it isn’t enough money. But here is the thing; being a part-time lecturer in academia never paid me enough, either.Sixteen years in academia made me an a-holeAfter a decade at the Ivies, I work at a bar. But I've learned more waiting tables than I did as a professorRani NeutillSalon

I had a lengthy discussion about the global impact with Mexican industrialist Carlos Slim Domit. He had a surprisingly good understanding of the advances in technologies such as computing, sensors, networks, robotics, artificial intelligence, and 3D printing. He spoke of the uplift of society in the developing world through broader access to information, education, health care, and entertainment — and the need to share and spread the prosperity that advancing technologies will create. He predicted the emergence of tens of millions of new service jobs in Mexico through meeting the Mexican people’s basic needs and enabling them to spend time on leisure and learning. He sees tremendous opportunities to build infrastructure where there is none, and to improve the lives of billions of people who presently spend their lives trying to earn enough on which to subsist.

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About Me

Come by to Jack Saturday once a week for some bracing anti-wage-slavery quotations, it'll be nice to have you over to the place. I'll be including some of the wake of my personal journey through freedom from the job in this third emancipatory phase of history, the phase of liberation of wage-slaves through a Guaranteed Livable Income.
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Come to Extraordinary Discourse for my podcast, wider ranging. It would be a joy to spend an hour a week with you.